Explore the roots of power and find out how to harness its strength for your own life

Power is the means by which you can get things done. It’s the freedom and opportunity to achieve your dreams. How does one become powerful?

The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women by Harriet Rubin is a women’s version of Machiavelli’s The Prince the classic book of strategy first published in the 16th century. Machiavelli was a counsellor to Renaissance royalty, and his little handbook has become one of the bestselling success manuals of all time. World leaders, generals and corporate executives have followed its advice. But its rules, based on cunning, deceit and dominance, do not work for women. Here, in this two-part series, Harriet Rubin gives us a fascinating insight into her thinking.

Introduction
The study of power begins when we are young. Our teachers in the lessons of power are parents, the schools, bullies and bosses. As girls, we don’t learn to exercise power. We live with it. Power often frightens us. Instead of acting with power, we act against it. We become passive. Instead of saying clearly what we want, we complain or withhold affection. We hint or suggest, whine, tease or even lie. We use power, but mostly in destructive ways, not in ways that win. We could get much more, more effectively, if we weren’t afraid of being outwardly powerful.

There is no shame in being powerful. Powerful people feel good about winning. Developing that feeling about yourself is important.

There has been countless advice for men on the exercise of power. Consider The Prince by Machiavelli or The Art of War by ancient Chinese philosopher-warrior, Sun Tzu or any current book on leadership. All suggest dominance and control. They do not build on women’s preference for nurturing and co-operation. For women there is only one book that describes how to use female strengths to change the game and thereby win in a way that makes the world larger for everyone. I know there is only one such book, because when I was nearing the end of my tether I didn’t know where to turn. To save myself, I had to find the answers on how to achieve power by researching the strengths and strategies of history’s most successful women.

If I was so smart and capable, why had I ended up like this?
That was the question that hit me soon after I walked out of my marriage. I looked at my job, I looked at everything I had struggled to achieve, and it all seemed undesirable – a terrible realisation, given the sacrifices I’d made. I came to one conclusion: I’d always aimed too low. I didn’t think I could have what I really wanted. I could make the small, safe decisions in life – a dull marriage, self-sabotaging workaholism, neglect of my own desires in order to satisfy others’. How did I end up in such a mess?

I’d tried to do things the correct way: I’d learned negotiation, toughness, analytical know-how. But all those skills did was dig me into a deeper hole. When women negotiate, we give up too much. When we play by the rules – men’s rules – we don’t win much worth having. Was there another way for a woman to win? To make the rules in our image?

That’s when I started studying the great women of history.
Machiavelli wrote The Prince by studying the Caesars and Napoleons and Sun Tzus and drew conclusions on what made those despots great. I studied women leaders and found that those who triumphed used a single strategy of their own: they combined the arts of love and war to triumph against impossible odds.

Let’s get one thing straight before we begin. The little bullet of a word: war. We can hate war and still acknowledge that life is full of conflicts – wars of intimacy, if you will. If we act as if each action of our life has critical consequences – as it does in war – then we would have a much better chance of thriving. The art of war that women must fight is not the bloody kind, not the wars of ego and greed, but the wars of intimacy, when the opponent is often close enough to hurt you.

What can we learn from historical examples?
Young samurai discovered ways of knowing their bodies’ strengths through their sensei or master, who explained how his sensei struck a particular pose, and his sensei before that. Today, our knowledge of power is limited to what some woman high-flyer scored in a business skirmish. This is a thin view of success: the facts and circumstances of comeuppance and anger, not the strategies and tactics of triumph. It is a view of success based on decades of defeat and compromise. Worse, it is based on rules of battle that ensure our defeat and self-resignation.

The cardinal law of power
Aspects of yourself that you think of as contradictory or as opposites are winning partners in war. Weakness comes from believing that you can’t be both a lover and a fighter. Great warriors understand that ‘fierce’ is the ally of ‘loving’, ‘confrontation’ is the ally of ‘peace’, ‘bravery’ is the ally of ‘vulnerability’. Princess Diana was often described by those who knew her as a mixture of humility and arrogance, suffering and domination. She gave off a feeling of having been wounded and of being all-powerful. That was the source of her commanding strength.

Combining opposites in behaviour and style throws your opponent off guard, introduces surprise and mystery – women’s great advantages. Here’s the cardinal law of power:

Never get outraged. Get outrageous.

Do the unexpected. You will confuse your opponents and achieve power. Even the smallest gestures have tremendous impact.

There is one other law:

Live your life as someone for whom triumph is a birthright.

Begin living as if you had already won a skirmish or your goal. You will come out ahead. A TV producer had put together a unique show that she wanted to report on camera. She knew the powers that be wanted a more glamorous face for the on-camera role. When she went to the meeting with the network executives, she simply behaved as if the job were already hers. Their confusion set them all working against each other, not against her. It bought her time and quiet from them while she laid out her excellent ideas for the programme. They eventually saw that with her passion, she would be the best on-camera personality. This is the art of not winning but besting. [For a full description, see The Princessa, pages 89-93.] Besting demands that you compete against yourself as much as against your opponent.

Women and power: how to act powerfully